


The Rooster in the Stars

by Queen_side_castle



Category: Original Work
Genre: Outer Space, Swearing, Trans Male Character
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-23
Updated: 2018-04-22
Packaged: 2019-04-26 15:07:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14404680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Queen_side_castle/pseuds/Queen_side_castle
Summary: Emmet Kline is fed up with his life. So fed up that he leaves, in the middle of night, and buys a one way ticket as far away from Pluto three as he can. From there, he stows away on the star trader The Eternity, where he gets a bit more than he bargained for.





	The Rooster in the Stars

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first published work, so thank you for taking the time to read it. Much of the internal conflict Emmet has is based on my own thoughts as well as the experiences my close friends have shared with me. Please feel free to comment with any grammar errors/plot holes etc! Again, thank you!

““Hi Emmy, it’s me, Laura! Just checking in! Janie told me you’d been worried about me, and asked me to call you to let you know I’m ok. This is a burner, so don’t bother calling me back. Yeah, I’m on Willow Prime right now, or near it at least! Sorry but I can’t tell you exactly where, you know why. Anyhow, yeah I’m alive, I’ll call you when I can-”

“Laura! Get over here, the Fantasma just scrambled a fleet, they want their prisoner back! You’re our gunner! Get to your Frinxeling post!”

“Shut your trap Diavael, I’m coming. Sorry Emmy, gotta go! Give my love to sissy!””

I sigh, deleting the message from my cell before dropping the device into a waste. I don’t know why Janie, mine and Laura's stepmother, insists that I must be worried about Laura. I made my peace with her ditching us for the stars a long time ago, and frankly, I don’t give a fuck anymore. Laura can have miraculous adventures in far off places, pretending that she’s still a part of this family. Hell, she doesn’t even know that ‘sissy’, as Laura calls Mattie, Janie’s daughter from before she met dad, went missing years ago, or that dad got committed for attempted suicide two weeks later, with two out of his three kids gone and his ‘soulmate’ long dead he wasn’t all that stable. The depression was understandable, but leaving Janie and I behind, alone to hate each other? Not ok. I never got along with her. As the youngest, you’d think that I’d like her more, having never met my mother, but it just never worked out that way. All of the ‘now I know I’m not your real mom’ really just pissed me off. That and her lack of understanding that, “Hey Janie! No, your darling daughter would much rather be your son.” Janie could never wrap her head around the fact that I’d rather be a son than a daughter, or really that I liked girls and guys or that I didn’t want to follow in her foot steps and be a soldier. Always a sucker for science and mechanics I’ve been. Laura loves the idea of the people she left being the perfect nuclear family, with no dads breaking their son and wife’s hearts or missing and presumed dead sisters. 

‘Course, Laura also doesn’t know that I’m doing the exact same thing to Janie that she did to dad. Taking off in the night I mean, and maybe breaking her heart, but I kind of doubt that. And well, I think that I one upped Laura. Hah, yeah, blowing your life savings on a one way ticket as far as they’ll get you and then planning on stowing away on a fringe trading ship? Yeah, I think that’s going a bit farther than Willow fucking Prime.

I walk nonchalantly towards the loading bay of the battleship class deep space vessel currently being filled with the last of its cargo. It’s not that big, but it looks sturdy enough, an ESDF-903 if I’m right, so yeah, very sturdy. This one’s called The Eternity, the name is painted in dark red paint on the side. On the door there’s massive symbol, a strange bird, also in red paint. The door slides open and I duck behind a crate, peering over the edge, heart pounding. Someone steps out and starts talking with the workers loading the ship. They stop to survey the crates on the other side of the gangway. I see my chance and, double checking that no one is watching, leap over the crate I was hiding behind and sprint the short distance to the gangway. I sort of slid into a crouch in the shadows under the ship as the group of dockworkers and the star sailor laugh at a joke one of the dock workers made. The star sailor gestures to the others, pointing to a small case on top of another larger one, they draw one of the dock workers, probably the leader, towards it as the others scatter to get the last of the supplies.

Now’s my chance, I grab at the railing of the gangway and pull myself onto it. I straighten and step quickly inside the ship. On an ESDF-903 there are about a million places to hide, but the best place for a skinny ass like me is… inside the walls. I creep down the hall and take the first left I can, down into another hallway. I stop three panels down, and pull a screw driver from my bag. Yes, I have a screwdriver, I came prepared for this, don’t judge me. Once the thing is open, the screws were stupidly loose, I climb in and use the anti-driver I have, (again, prepared) to close it from the inside. Once it’s firmly shut, I close my eyes and relax in the almost total darkness, half leaning back into the wiring. After a few deep breaths to calm my heart, this is probably the stupidest pre-meditated thing I’ve ever done, I open them again to the sight of two slightly glowing orbs. I almost scream, but a smooth hand covers my mouth.

“Shhhh!” The other stowaway whispers frantically. The hand lifts slowly off, cautiously as if the stranger isn’t sure whether or not I’ll scream.

“Alright, ok! Sorry mate.” I say, quietly. Neither one of us speaks for a second, and then my fellow wall-dweller giggles softly.

“Oh my light, this is hilarious. By the stars, how did both of us pick the same panel to hide behind?”

“Well this is technically the-“ I start, but the other interrupts me.

“Least likely, statistically speaking, place for someone to look for a stowaway”

“Actually I was going to say that this is the only place on the ESDF-903 that has no wiring or piping, no free-flowing electric current or insulation, isn’t on an outer wall, isn’t a storage space, and isn’t at the end of a hallway.”

“Well, I had no idea that any of that was true but I guess you’re right! My name’s Lallisea, I’m from Eydne, bastard daughter of the sixteenth house.” She says, and I can see her grin with slightly fluorescent teeth.

“Emmet Kline, only son of my family. I’m from Pluto 3, and going as far away from ‘home’ as I can.”

“Me too.” We smile and Lallisea puts out her hand, I grasp it.

It’s an unbelievable and hilarious coincidence that the pair of us ended up in the same space of wall and it’s even more amusing that we seem to be becoming fast friends.

Over the next few hours as the ship takes off into deep space and travels further and further from Pluto 3 and my “family” Sea, as she said I could call her, and I carry on a quiet conversation on topics ranging from our favorite foods, and other ice-breaker questions, to our mutual love for watching shitty travel tv as an escape from a shitty existence. We’re in the middle of an intense debate over the practicality of using a Feritus algorithm instead of the Loris method when The Eternity shakes with something that feels like an explosion.

Sea and I step cautiously out of the cramped wall only a minute after we feel the ship shudder violently and start to hear a klaxon after the shrieking sound of metal on metal stops. She and I decided together that the least we could do for our unknowing hosts is help them as something seems to have gone wrong. I already know the layout of the ship and I decide to take us through a shortcut to the bridge, but, unsure of how to proceed once we get there, I pause in the doorway.

On the bridge there are five chairs, but only three people are there. Two of them are standing at banks of monitors frantically typing and yelling at each other. The third person is sat at the helm of the ship, gripping the wheel with one hand and tugging ineffectively on the throttle with the other.

Sea shares none of my caution as she raises her hand to knock on the doorway. She knocks softly, but somehow the pair at the monitors stop yelling and turn around, they look like twins, although with slight difference. The one on the left has green beads in her hair while the other’s is dyed purple, an interesting contrast to the pair’s teal toned skin.

“Hi, so, technically we’re stowaways but you look like you need help. What can we do?” She asks, her tone saying that there was no questions as to whether or not we were going to help, only as to how.

“Who? What?” One of the twins asks, the one with dyed hair. From the helm, the pilot speaks up through gritted teeth without turning around,

“Right now I don’t care who they are, they’re offering to help. What are your names and what can you do?”

“I’m Emmet, I know a hell of a lot about space phenomena and only a bit less about mechanics.”

“Lallisea, maths, piloting, and politics”

“That’ll work for me, Emmet, work with the twins to figure out what just happened and how the ship is, Lallisea, can I call you Lalli?”

“Sure”

“Lalli, get over here and take over the controls so I can figure out where the fuck we are.”

I race to where the twins are and start flipping through the data that they’d found so far as Sea goes to grab the wheel from the pilot.

“I’m Jay, she’s Iko.” The beaded one, Jay, introduces herself and her sister.

“Nice to meet you, what’s your pilot’s name?”

“I’m Mattie, good of you to ask me directly.”

I freeze and look up from the screen. God fucking dammit, I knew I recognized that voice. Dark brown eyes meet my own, and lo and behold, my goddamn sister is staring right at me, just as shocked as I am.

“Emma?” She has that stupid, open-mouthed expression that she’s had every other time I’ve surprised her. It’s as if me stowing away on her fucking ship is the same as her walking in on me wrapping her birthday present.

“It’s Emmet now Matilda. What a coincidence this is, hearing from my AWOL sisters twice in one day, lucky me”

“Mattie, short for Matthew now.” Oh ok, whelp, seems like dad got the firstborn son he always wanted.

“Well damn, you leave because of Janie too?”

“Nah, kidnapped”

“Shit ok, not me, I ran the hell away.” I’m still shocked.

“Wow, alright.” There’s a short silence.

“Boys, while I see that you have history, it can wait. Because I think I got the ship to stop hurtling through space.”

“Yeah. Yeah, ok Sea.” I turn back to the monitors and shake my head clear. I think Mattie flips the klaxon off and the bridge is quieter, letting us work in peace.

“Hey, Jay, Emmet” Iko waves a hand at me and her twin “Do you see this?” She points to a data set and a few graphs.

“Holy fuck that’s a wormhole signature with a ton of radiation. I think we just jumped through a wormhole guys, and an unstable one at that.” I say.

“Ok, that sounds plausible, but to where?” Jay asks

“I think,” Mattie pauses to type, “that I have an answer for that,” Mattie does a thing with he-his hands and pulls up a massive map to overlay the viewport, “So we started here” He points to a small area on the bottom left, “And based on the position of this,” He points at a small speck of light, a star, “I think that we are…” at this he begins zooming out of the area, it takes almost a full minute before he points again. The area he’s pointing at now is incredibly far from the first star. I start to freeze up, realizing what this might mean.

“Here, about twenty three billion light years from the port we took off from. Sorry guys but I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore”


End file.
